Sunday, September 16, 2012

Lysosome

I am a bunch of small sacs of enzymes dispersed around the cell of a eukaryote. Researchers have found 40 different types of enzymes inside of me. I usually confine my enzymes and their actions to just inside of me, but when the tissue around me breaks, I am referred to as a "leaky" lysosome. My primary form is made by budding from the Golgi complex and my hydrolytic enzymes are synthesized in the Rough ER. When one or more of my primary forms fuse with the vesicle containing the ingested material (bacteria/debris) I become a larger vesicle called a secondary lysosome. When one of my enzymes is missing, it means bad news for humans. A great example of this is Tay-Sachs disease. A lipid can't be broken down inside of the brain due to a missing enzyme and it accumulates and kills somebody.

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